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Over the past five months, state legislatures in Western states have been engaged in a dizzying flurry of legislative activity, considering bills on land conservation, energy development, water conservation, and other related topics. In a new blog post, Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby provides a highlight reel of state-level policy advances and setbacks from the 2024 legislative sessions.
Approaches to state-level land conservation policy vary widely. Colorado continued to show leadership on oil and gas regulation, wildlife habitat protection, and water conservation. Utah desperately tried to prop up fossil fuels while competing with Arizona to pass the most anti-federal government messaging bills. Most of New Mexico’s pro-conservation bills died in the extremely short budget session. Idaho and Wyoming managed to steer clear of the most damaging ideas, ending their sessions with mixed bags of policy outcomes for conservation.
Western states are likely to continue to respond to policy shifts and funding opportunities at the federal level, and the outcome of the upcoming election in November 2024 will only magnify those responses. The resurgence of anti-federal government extremist ideas, led by Arizona and Utah, may build and spread to other states as legislators dig through each others’ recycling bins to find anti-conservation bill ideas. But as Colorado has shown, another path is possible—one in which state policymakers align with voters in their states, who consistently express support for public lands and conservation, and demonstrate that state-level policy leadership can drive meaningful conservation outcomes in the West. Read the full 2024 Western states legislative wrap-up on CWP's Westwise blog.
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Only wealthy real estate developers and mining and oil and gas industries would benefit from the radical idea of selling off land that belongs to the American people.”
